Author: alex

Categories
Hardware Pocketpc Windows

Active Sync Woes : use a Bluetooth connection !

I’ve had it with the irregular, unresponsive, plug-and-pray manner that Active Sync and Microsoft in general work with USB connections to PocketPC’s. Either it’s Active Sync not syncing or ‘Unknown USB device’ for my cable, it’s just gone on too long.

And I’m not the only one – I’ve read several comments over the last few days that people are getting fed up.

After all my troubles trying to get my Active Sync USB connection going again, removing and reinstalling AS and USB drivers, even going so far as to install AS beta 4.2, I still could not get a connection. So I went the other route and bought a PEABIRD bluetooth usb module.

It was actually 0.50 € cheaper in the FNAC than the D-Link BT120 module which I knew about, plus it promised EDR – Bluetooth 2.0 instead of regular 1.1 Bluetooth that D-Link offers.

After the Toshiba drivers and utilities are installed, setting up Active Sync was a snap (well, almost). I first put both devices discoverable, paired the devices (for some reason or another, the only way that pairing works well for me is when I start the pair process from the pocket pc), and then discovered the services that were offered on each and created the relevant shortcuts for them, both on the pc and on the ppc.

Once that was done, I then set up an Active Stink, sorry Sync connection choosing to use Bluetooth to sync.

To get an actual sync working, I have to do the following steps :
1. Start Bluetooth serial connection on the pc (it has attributed itself COM40 !) using the shortcut it created.
2. Start AS on my pocketpc (making sure that Bluetooth is active)
3. Click the Sync button

and voila ! Sync auto-starts and everything works just fine.

Speed of sync is fine, although I suspect that my pc is only BT1.1 capable, it still works reasonably fast. I set both Bluetooth services back to non-discoverable again, plus only paired devices can connect. This should give some security.

All in all, it slightly more work starting the Sync, but so far all my Sync attempts have worked first time. No more install and re-install hassle (let’s hope so).

Categories
Blog News Windows

UltraVNC or a cheap software KVM switch

I was looking for a way to access my Windows XP Home Machine, which I use less and less, from my Mac. As previously reported, a KVM solution made by Belkin looked very good to me.

But while I was browsing some bulletin boards on the topic, somebody mentioned UltraVNC, the remote viewable software solution. I had previously tried WinVNC (now called RealVNCand TightVNC) but their performance over my local netwerk (100 Mbit) was very slow.

UltraVNC, however, is completely different. Very slick and polished, and when you install the mirror video driver (without any problems whatsoever, except a reboot) performance really skyrockets – it’s like you are really sitting in front of your computer, the response speed is so good as to be almost the same as normal !

As long as you use the normal vnc login method, it’s compatible with other VNC clients so I can connect using Chicken of VNC or any other mac VNC client.

Next up to try : playing a game under it (Putt-Putt saves the zoo for the connaisseurs) that Tom adores. If that works, I don’t need to buy the Belkin KVM anymore… Heck, I’ll try and play CounterStrike, though I don’t hold up much hope for that though… 🙂

Update : playing a game like a childrens game is not really bareable, everything flickers. Playing a video actually works, but it is very choppy. So I guess I’ll need a KVM after all.

Categories
Blog News

Thirty-Eight

That’s how old I am as of today.

Phew. I couldn’t have imagined me at 38 when I was 28, let alone when I was 18. And lookee here.
Father, Husband, Project Manager, Gamer, Reader. All rolled into one big lump.

Can we stop the clock now ? Naaaaaa.

Categories
Gaming PSP

PSP Headset and SOCOM Fireteam Bravo

I’ve played a few rounds of online SOCOM:FTB and other than the mic not working, I was impressed by the speed of the connection and the smoothness of playing, and while the graphics were not spectulary like CounterStrike they were definitely good-looking and smooth enough. NO hiccups !In order for the mic to work, it seems that I need to open udp(+tcp ?) ports 6000-6999 and udp ports 10070-10080. Apparently there is no dynamic plug-play configuration by the game.

No mention of that anywhere in the manual. A few hints here and there on some site and a text-file givng a generic setup on psp-vault.
Bummer. Not too happy about punching extra holes in my router. I’ll try to restrict this to only the psp by defining in the router a fixed dhcp ip for the psp mac address and forwarding the ports to that ip only, I just hope that it doesn’t conflict with my CounterStrike or Skype usage on my regular pc…

I’ll update this post with the correct ports and how it works when I’ve had a chance to test it out.

Update : the portrange you need to forward are udp AND tcp 6000-6999 and udp range 10070-10080.

Categories
Gaming PSP

PSP Firmware upgrade 2.70 is out

I am, as I am writing this, in the process of upgrading my PSP (version 2.0 firmware) to the very latest firmware 2.70. The only homebrew program that I used was a snes emulator, and only infrequently at that.

So, with the new possibility of downloadable demos, RSS channels, wma playback, downloadable videos, I am swayed to upgrading.

Note : this is the us version of the software I’m linking to. For European users, try www.yourpsp.com. But updating was a simple as activating my wireless network connection and choosing ‘network update’. Done !

Plus I bought Socom Fireteam Bravo today, which requires at least firmware 2.60. It includes a headset with microphone, and I am really looking forward to trying this out !

Update : seems that Firmware 2.70 blocks the GTA exploit – which was to be expected…

Categories
Blog News

Night Intervention at 3am

The zombie awakens and blinks his bloodshot eyes blearely. The small God has awoken once more from his restless slumber and is again casting his battle cry, forcing the zombie to come forth and do his bidding.

Shakely the zombie crawls from the deep pit he was lying in. He sways towards the small God to await his orders. After some tossing of his head, he issues his orders, to be obeyed and executed immediately. Our zombie descends haltingly into hell’s kitchen, where the bright fires hurt his eyes.

There he prepares the special potion of forgetfullness that the little God wants. With what he can still control of his face, our zombie mumbles arcane formulas and countings while preparing the formula. Finally it is ready, heated by the invisible fire.

The God drinks, and lapses again into not-being-there.

Zombie can rest again. For now.

Categories
Blog News

Sam is ill (again)

Sam had us a bit worried, this Saturday night. From Friday onwards Sam has had a low-grade fever, but I thought that he had some more teeth coming through, from which they do sometimes get a fever (I don’t care that the doctors say this is not true, I’ve seen it). This time, though, something more was brewing.
Saturday, he had a fever of 39,8°C that wouldn’t go down, no matter what we tried, using Unifen and Perdolan. So we went to the night-shift doctor (normally they come to visit you, but this one asked us to come, which suites us as it was faster than waiting). Still, I’m glad to have my trusty GPS bluetooth solution to find all those doctors and pharmacies.
The doctor diagnosed him as having a severe throat infection and a small right-ear infection, and immediately prescribed antibiotics that he had to start taking tonight. While I went out on another gps-chase to find a still-open pharmacy, Dolores gave Sam a cold bath (lots of screams from Sam there).

The antibiotics seem to be very effective though – he is getting visibly better, though still very tired.

So are we; feeling better that Sam came through this, but we’re also tired.

Categories
Blog News Links

Project Management Abstraction

Joel On Software released another great article, titled Development Abstraction.

He explains, from a software development point of view how a (software development) company must be run to get things done, the underlying infrastructure eliminating overhead and letting the programmers just do their job (the main task of the company) without anything else distracting them from doing their programming.

I think his points are extremely valid, and even more so, that they can be applied to more than just software development companies. Joel himself makes some great other examples :

Nobody expects Dolly Parton to know how to plug in a microphone. There’s an incredible infrastructure of managers, musicians, recording technicians, record companies, roadies, hairdressers, and publicists behind her who exist to create the abstraction that when she sings, that’s all it takes for millions of people to hear her song. All the support staff and management that make Dolly Parton possible can do their jobs best by providing the most perfect abstraction: the most perfect illusion that Dolly sings for us. It is her song. When you’re listening to her on your iPod, there’s a huge infrastructure that makes that possible, but the very best thing that infrastructure can do is disappear completely. Provide a leakproof abstraction that Dolly Parton is singing, privately, to us.

I think that the same can be said for project management – as a project manager, you have to provide a leakproof abstraction to your team members so that can get on with their project work.

You making the hard decisions or those nitty-gritty follow-ups that no one else wants to make is one part of the job. It’s not about the power of the position, it’s about how you can serve your team members best. They have the detailed view, you have the global view, and you both work together to get the project finished.
Making sure that there are no stumble blocks on the road ahead of them that can distract them is for me an important part of being a project leader.

Categories
Pocketpc

Active Sync 4.1 woes (Unknown USB Device) and solution !

This morning I synced my pocket pc with my workpc. Everything went fine, update as normal. In the afternoon I did so again. Suddenly my extension cable was recognised as an ‘unknown usb device’ and whatever I tried, it no longer synced.

Active Stink didn’t even see my pocket pc anymore, it just saw the connection cable.

Googling found me this workaround (which didn’t work) :

When synchronizing with my Desktop pc my Pocket PC is not recognized by Windows 2000 when using a USB cradle.
Cause: Windows 2000 has identified your Pocket PC as an unknown USB device. The drivers were not installed properly.

Solution:

1. Print or copy these instructions. This is for Windows 2000 only.
2. Remove your Pocket PC from the USB cradle.
3. Go to My Computer, right click and select Properties.
4. Click Hardware and then Device Manager.
5. Right click USB Devices and select Uninstall.
6. Go to the Control Panel and select Add/Remove Programs.
7. Locate ActiveSync and Uninstall it.
8. Reinstall ActiveSync.
9. Perform a soft reset on your Pocket PC.
10. Place your Pocket PC back into the USB cradle and perform a sync.

This might work for you, but it wasn’t enough for me to get AS functioning again.
So what else can you do ?

Well, when you check your AS installation, you’ll find a subdirectory ‘drivers’ in there. Compare the file wceusbsh.sys in there against the one in your %windows%drivers directory (this differs depending on the windows version you are using). Particularly check the date when the file was modified.
In my case, the one in my windows drivers directory was from 2004 while the one in the AS directory is more recent,from 2005. So I did two additional things :

  • I right-mouse clicked on the wceusbsh.inf file and selected ‘install’ – just in case this had failed during AS installation.
  • I copied the file wceusbsh.sys over the one in the windows drivers directory.

After rebooting the pc and soft-resetting my ppc, Active Stink worked fine again ! W00t !

So I include this whole procedure just in case someone else has the same problem.

Categories
Pocketpc

PocketUAE update

I completely missed this since I was mucking about with my psp, but Pocket Insanity has a new version of PocketUAE out since January. It includes bug fixes for on-screen keyboard and definable keys.
Go get it for your mobile device.

Sadly, for the psp (which you have to admit, has a bigger screen), the UAE version is very limited and only available for psp with firmware 1.0.